Monday, March 01, 2021
Covid Status
New Covid cases appear to be nearing a bottom in the U.S. (but still at a pretty-high level - we need more vaccinations). Over the last two months, the UK and Spain seem to be the most-improved; Italy and Sweden are having worrisome upticks.
Saharan Spring
The 2020/21 rainy season fiasco continues, portending real troubles in the hot, hot summer to come, given that reservoirs are at about two-thirds capacity right now.
Currently, rainfall at Sacramento Executive Airport's weather station is about 41% of average, making it even worse than for the 2013/14 rainy-season disaster, and the third-worst on record (since 1947).
Interestingly, the current season not among the worst for the older Downtown Sacramento site. We had worse rainy seasons a hundred years ago. Today's closest parallel is to the 1927/28 rainy season.
Startled by the New Mexico State Flag Showing up in Lady Gaga's Video
Russian symbolism, and other cool stuff:
CPAC = Nazis
They know exactly what they are doing, and I wish the worst for them:
What makes the CPAC stage worse? Well, look at the two bottom legs.
Unlike the original Odal rune, those legs are not just straight lines. They have ‘branches’ extending from the base of the rune.
...The Germanic tribes and their Viking ancestors NEVER* carved those extra ‘branches’. I have seen images of EVERY PUBLISHED Elder Futhark carving/engraving known to archeology. NONE of them have those extra branches. That symbol on the CPAC stage originated with the Nazi Schutzstaffel — the criminal mass murderers of the Nazi SS. Probably started as a logo for the SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (the SS Race and Settlement Office) which policed the racial purity of the SS itself.
What's an Arsenal in a Quiet Residential Neighborhood?
A Surprise in Carmichael:
Video from LiveCopter 3 on Thursday showed deputies seizing a sizable amount of firearms from the Carmichael home. The sheriff's office in its latest release said it had seized about 30,000 AK-47 rounds; 5,000 AR-15 rounds; and tens of thousands of semiautomatic handgun rounds.
On top of the ammunition, the sheriff's office said 21 semiautomatic handguns, four revolvers, 18 rifles, three shotguns, three Polish-made grenade launchers, many armor-piercing rounds, silencers, equipment to make silencers and an array of ballistic safety equipment were also recovered from the home.
The sheriff's office said some of the weapons found in the home were modified to be considered assault rifles under California's penal code. The weaponry has since been moved as evidence into the sheriff's property warehouse.
Deputies first responded to Bodai's home in the 1400 block of Mission Avenue around 1:50 a.m. Thursday after he called dispatchers, himself, the sheriff's office said. Bodai had called saying that there were people in his house who were there to repair a gas leak but were instead eating his food and that he had them at gunpoint.
Dispatchers later in that call heard a gunshot fire off, and Bodai said he shot someone, the sheriff's office said. Deputies who arrived at the home -- with help from dispatch -- calmed Bodai and convinced him to walk outside. He was arrested without the situation escalating
...Bodai showed signs of a mental health crisis, and a gun violence restraining order was issued around 6 a.m., the sheriff's office said.
As the weapons were being seized, three sticks of dynamite with a charge timer were found, prompting a half-mile radius evacuation affecting 1,800 residences, the sheriff's office said.
...The sheriff’s office first tweeted after 11:35 a.m. for people to avoid the area near Mission Avenue between Fair Oaks Boulevard and Arden Way over a suspicious device. Authorities later said that what they first described as a bomb turned out to be fake dynamite that looked realistic.
Australia Really is a Magical Place
Australia really is quite a magical place.
Posted by Marc Valdez on Friday, February 26, 2021
Amazing Photo From Martian Orbit!
Jezero Crater is an amazing place to be right now. Boyd Waters writes: 
And the code in the parachute!:
This image blows my mind: Perseverance Lander descent, hanging from the parachute, captured by the HIRISE camera of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
This phase of the decent lasted only a matter of seconds, at supersonic velocity, falling through the extremely thin Martian atmosphere.
Meanwhile the MRO is moving at orbital velocity. Just incredible work. The planning and execution that culminated in this photograph are profoundly humbling to me
He thought about encoding words using binary code. But what would the message be?
While he has never been one to look at a motivational poster and derive much meaning from it, three words stood out to Clark:
"Dare mighty things." The motto, taken from a Theodore Roosevelt speech, is in buildings all across the JPL campus. "Week after week, I definitely never got tired of reading 'Dare Mighty Things,'" Clark said. "And it's not just the phrase, but it's even the broader context of the speech. This great inspirational message really represented the culture of JPL and NASA as a whole."
He also included the GPS coordinates for JPL on the outer ring of the parachute.
Bidding Farewell to TWA Flight 800
Didn’t realize they had kept the reconstruction as a training tool. This remains one of the strangest and saddest of air accidents.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it will destroy the remaining wreckage of TWA Flight 800 after nearly 20 years as a training tool.
TWA Flight 800 grabbed the world’s attention when shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in July 1996, the Paris-bound Boeing 747 exploded, killing all 230 onboard. The NTSB investigation became the longest, most complicated and expensive investigation in aviation history, lasting more than four years and costing $40 million.
For weeks, pieces of the wreckage were pulled from the water off the coast of Long Island and meticulously pieced back together.
Housed for nearly two decades in a warehouse at the NTSB Training Center in Ashburn, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C., the wreckage has been used to teach thousands of air crash investigators and transportation specialists from around the world.
On Monday, the NTSB said in a news release it will decommission and destroy the wreckage as the lease on the 30,000-square foot warehouse is set to expire.